By now you've likely had the misfortune of wading knee-deep into the overflowing septic tank that passes for dialogue surrounding the Michael Brown story. Predictably, on one side of the argument, there are those who see this as yet another example of violence perpetrated against black men by an institutionally racist law enforcement complex. On the other extreme, you have those who think that Brown, simply because he was even in a position to run afoul of the police, must have done something to provoke his own killing, aggression being the natural state of the animalistic black man.

Somewhere in that spectrum there are those who are still waiting for all the facts to come in.

They're going to be waiting a long time.

"Waiting for all the facts to come in" is a common trope whenever there's a racially charged, or politically tendentious story in the news that captures all of our attention. In theory, it's an appeal to some unreachable, platonic model of journalistic balance, the type of "some say, others say" equivocating that comprises most of the work done by our milquetoast national media. This myth presumes that the truth in any story must fall in the exact center of some probability distribution equation between either extreme. It assumes that both extremes hold equal validity, when that is almost never true.

There's a more pernicious application of this line of thinking in stories like this, and it sounds like this:

"So, why didnt everyone wait until the facts came in before the went crazy?" one arbiter of universal factual equilibrium, in response to a previous Ferguson story on Esquire, wants to know. "Everyone just believed Dorian Johnson's 'story' from the get go. Then every day or so the facts started rolling in—he had robbed a store, an autopsy showed no shots in the back, other witness accounts of the story detailing that he tried to jump through the cop's window to get the gun, etc."

It could have been lifted from the Trayvon Martin aftermath, or in the comments on reports about Eric Garner's killing by the NYPD, or any of a hundred other stories about the dispatching of black men by authority figures. "Just the facts, ma'am," says a nation of Joe Fridays, each a dispassionate observer here to sort through the emotional responses from the fool-hearty left.

Here's a fact: Mike Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot six times by an officer of the law.

Here are some other facts: "One of the bullets shattered Mr. Brown's right eye, traveled through his face, exited his jaw and re-entered his collarbone," the New York Times writes of the autopsy results. "The last two shots in the head would have stopped him in his tracks and were likely the last fired."

The "waiting for the facts" refrain is most often bellowed from the wrongest people imaginable: 9/11-truthers, vaccine-deniers, climate-change skeptics, police-abuse apologists, homophobes, "race-realists." It's as if in every conceivable argument the truth will eventually out if we just hold on a little while longer, and see how things shake out.

Of course, it doesn't actually mean they want a thorough accounting of the details. Instead it means to wait for a preferred version of the facts to arrive, which are due presently. Like, say, in this willfully distorted piece, which conflates irrelevant statistics—"children will see 16,000 murders on television before they have the right to vote," which is so many more than the police commit!—to prove that, well, I don't know what. Being a cop is hard.

In the case of the Darren Wilson supporters, waiting for the facts means forestalling judgment until enough exculpatory evidence can be ginned-up. It means holding out long enough for the police to get their stories straight, to concoct a narrative in which people like Brown are violent criminals. It means laying down covering fire long enough that the character assassins can get the target in their sights. It means anticipating phoney injury reports being disseminated, for the likes of Wilson, and George Zimmerman to get their ducks in order, to bolster their defense. It means leaving the story's carcass out in the sun long enough for the vultures to pick it clean.

"Waiting for the facts" means, after arresting a black man for sitting on a public bench and waiting to pick up his children by himself, keeping his phone as evidence for six months.

"Waiting for the facts" means waiting to develop a cover story. It means waiting for story to blow over. It means waiting until "But that was seven months ago! Get over it!" becomes a legitimate excuse.

Here's another group of facts, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"Last year, blacks, who make up a little less than two-thirds of the driving-age population in [Ferguson] accounted for 86 percent of all stops. When stopped, they were almost twice as likely to be searched as whites and twice as likely to be arrested, though police were less likely to find contraband on them."

"While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States' population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned."

"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime."

I do not know exactly what happened between Mike Brown and Officer Darren Wilson. It's entirely possible that Brown decided that August 9 would be the day that he would attack a police officer—that he was so enraged for being asked to step out of the street by Wilson that he lunged into a police car, attempted to steal the officer's weapon, and, failing to do so, began attacking Wilson with his fists, smashing his eye socket with his mighty blows. It's possible that he then turned and ran, but, thinking better of it, decided to come back for more. It's possible that he was impervious to Wilson's first flurry of bullets, charging ever onward, like the goddamn Wolverine in berserker mode, desperate to enact his revenge, before ultimately succumbing to two head shots that would kill him.

This is all possible. The facts may bear this out in time. We just have to wait and see. If, in the waiting, we dig up some unsavory facts about Brown's past they may aid in dragging his name through the mud, well, that's just responsible journalism.

Only around 750 of the 17,000 law enforcement agencies contribute data on how many citizens they shoot per year. They are not required by federal law to do so.

In the seven year period leading up to 2012, a black man was killed by a white police officer almost two times a week.

The problem with waiting and seeing is it's a form of control, of maintaining the populaces' passivity in the face of curdling fury and well-earned anger. It's similar to the type of reasoning you hear from the right whenever there's a school shooting or a mass-killing. "Let's not politicize this," they say. "This is not the right time."

It's a means of punting, of forestalling the discussion that needs to happen—not later, but right now.

The facts aren't coming in, they're already here. Many of us just don't like what they're telling us.